I agree absolutely. It is a dangerous trend in the Tory party and why my modest hopes for it continue to dissipate. The latest Gove announcement is quite illustrative of this new political moralism: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/aug/04/6?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront

I believe in morality, but I don’t think politicians have much place discussing it!

However, these very pages demonstrate that the left isn’t exactly immune to the temptation of the “nudge”: https://liberalconspiracy.org/2008/05/08/what-is-the-case-against-government-interference/

If liberals are to live up their name, they should oppose government public morality policies from all corners.

“This is all very lovely but there is the question of whether this is acceptable.”

I don’t think that’s the real question. The question is whether it works. If it works, you would risk looking like a navel-gazing philosopher to object to it on grounds of some standard of acceptability.

As for “libertarian paternalism”, I suspect that this is indeed an oxymoron. Nudging is paternalism. Which is no bad thing.

Hmm, the idea is that it is paternalism without authoritarianism, I guess. Its a false dichotomy, though, to assume that anything that isn’t authoritarian is libertarian. YMMV.

But works at doing what exactly? Making people live longer? What if they would rather have a shorter but more fun life with drink, drugs and rock n’roll. Paternalism only “works” even in theory if you assume that there is some overall goal for the WHOLE of society which the government should steer towards. You can’t be a pure pragmatist until you know what you are aiming for.

I think this is the nature of the target driven state, where a party makes some manifesto pledge (higher life expectancy, 50 per cent of pupils going to university, whatever) then spends all its time trying to “nudge” people into making the decisions that will make the state more likely to hit its own target, without questioning whether it is in the interests of the particular individuals they are nudging or whether it is even their business what they choose to do with their lives.

As long as you’re fully informed about the situation who cares if you opt in or opt out of anything?

‘The idea is simple; the government shouldn’t constrain the moral autonomy of individuals but can exploit people’s inertia as well as “encouraging” them through the dissemination of information. In pursuit of the latter, Cameron has explicitly said that he wants the government to articulate a specific conception of the good and to therefore be a moral standpoint for society.’

Oh….that’s alright then!
For a minute I thought I had walked onto the set of the Twilight Zone, where insane, nonsensical bollocks was accepted as good, virtuous moral politicising. Clearly not, as the tried and tested Orwellian model of double speak saves it from being incoherent and overcomplicated nation building. Hmmm.
I guess a POSSIBLE future government isn’t seen as doing it’s Job, unless it can be seen in advance to be trying to figure out how we go about doing what we want to do, when should we want to do it, and I guess, exactly what it may be that we want to do.
Like at infant school, where some poorly paid teacher spends half the day telling Her/His pupils that trying to eat plasticine is wrong. Yeah, it may have lovely colours, little Jimmy, but you wouldn’t want to chew it, or try blowing bubbles!

‘In a different vein, some wonks have put forward the idea of sin licenses. In order to smoke, drink or gamble individuals would have to purchase a license – just as they do when they want to drive. Individuals with problems of addiction can voluntary opt out by signing up to a registry that prohibits them from purchasing such a license if, in their darkest hours, they seek to return to their addiction.’

And at what point does any of this allude to the so-called democracy that I am alleged to live in? A license to smoke? That implies that I would need to be taking smoking lessons. So, if I dangerously smoked on a double yellow line, I take it I would be banned from smoking for 6 months! Maybe the amount of cigarettes I buy a month would be reduced on my license?!
Would I get extra points for getting lung cancer before my fortieth birthday, a kind of good smoker reward. “Well done mate, you smoked exceptionally well this year. Here, have an extra carton on your yearly rations. Slap my leg and call me easy!”
The only way to cap this all off, and re-enforce the legitimacy of this paranoid thought control is to say something along the lines of “As a good Christian, and regular churchgoer, I believe……(affix sermon here)”.
There is something truly insane about facing up to this all with a straight face.
No philosophising needed.
And, naively, I thought the barriers we live within which we are told are our freedoms was already restricted.
It must be quite boring being a politician, knowing how untrustworthy you are, and yet knowing people are still willing to impart a certain moral authority upon you simply because of your position. My only guess is that using books like this as political building blocks are our lords and masters way of having a really good joke.
That, or, Heaven forbid, they really are all pious ignorant bastards, cynically launching mental diarrhea upon us in a bid to make themselves seem important.
Because doing something immediate and poverty releaving, like, say, increasing the daily wage, or actually scrutinising then arresting corporations for forcing up the price of bread would lead to….happier people, less docile societies?!
Have I just committed treason, or am I a year or two too early?
Stay tuned!

Ah. Sorry guys.
Got, er, kinda carried away. Somewhat!

Libertarian paternalism clearly is an oxymoron, but I assume it’s been adopted as a term in order to provide political cover for what are some pretty sensible ideas.

For example, auto-enrolment into pension schemes is a simple but effective way of getting people to save more for retirement, which most of us want to do. If you are genuinely cash-strapped you can opt out. But for most people who want to save but can’t face getting around to doing anything about it auto-enrolment is a very effective ‘nudge’.

Another point that is well made in the book is that there often isn’t a neutral option – not intervening can have an effect in itself, and even random arrangements (ie order of names on a ballot paper) can affect outcomes.

Auto opt-in of pensions would be vaguely sensible except for the way the system is currently structured (this I know second hand from someone who has looked into the policy in some depth but excuse me if I get a detail wrong). For the moment, means tested pension benefits will mean that the individual won’t see any benefit from saving more than the compulsory national insurance – it will get eaten up by the fact that they don’t get the means tested anymore. Hence, they have less spending power today for the sake of… the same level of spending in their retirement. So I guess the thinking behind opting people into putting more away into pensions is one or both of -

1. The government are just hoping people won’t notice, hence the auto opt-in, allowing them to prop up the pensions system with more money for the same outlay.
2. Actually owning your own pension, even if you were merely opted into it, might turn out to be more secure than a means tested pension in years to come when the UK is on the verge of bankruptcy. In other words, people choosing to stay within the opt-in pensions will be banking on the rules changing later on to their advantage.

I acknowledge this is a difficult area as it is very difficult to get people out of the mindset that they don’t have to save for their retirement.

I wonder if i might raise a question of house style?

The second link in the main article to The Economist leads to a subscription page. I assume Dan Harkin isn’t being paid to try to get us to subscribe to the The Economist on-line – am I alone in finding such links discourteous?

Nick

I think the point about means testing is a bit of a red herring because it applies regardless of whether people are auto-enrolled or not. One could make the same point about someone buying a personal pension. In my experience this argument against auto-enrolment is primarily made by some in the insurance industry.

Also are we assuming that all people who are eligible for means tested benefits will remain so? Is it safe to assume that they will stay poor and hence we shouldn’t encourage them to make extra provision?

Also from what I have read the numbers of people in the problem group are relatively small (given that the policy will affect millions) and there maybe a way to deal with it, so I think the policy is sound in principle.

Finally, it’s not impossible that a fture government would scrap means tested benefits in nay case, which gets rid of the problem. Though this would realistically involve a boost to the value of the state pension.

Mike, guessing but it’s possible (probable) that Dan’s place of study has a subscription and automatically lets him see the full article. I personally have no problem with the link, there are other links in the article that describe it and the Economist chooses a daft subscription model, that’s their fault not Dan’s—understanding his piece doesn’t require the link it’s just extra background.

I find the idea of trying to exert social pressure around ‘moral’ choices slightly worrying, especially given the condemnatory approach some will take regarding certain lifestyles and ‘choices’. Not something I’m happy to see brought to the fore of policy making—good for discussion, perhaps, but not process.

I think that the use of ‘nudging’ can be justified and can work. However, as some have pointed out, the question is how it is used. I agree with Nick on the morality point. Indeed, one of the biggest reservations I have about the Tories is that, for all they have abandoned, they still retain their Christian moral vision and I am concerned that they will try to impose it on others. The article Nick linked to is about Gove spouting the evils of lads mags. I agree with him that they are disgusting and treat women like sex objects, however, I think politicians interfering in their editorial content is very worrying.

I think Nudging can work provided it is used only for ethics and not morals. I think it would be very reasonable for the government to charge less tax on ethical banking. So if you bank at the Co-op, Smile or Triodos you pay less tax than if you bank at HSBC or Natwest. However, the Tory idea of providing incentives for marriage is frankly disgusting. Despite what Gove may say: “Helping adults commit and stay committed not only opens the door to a depth of emotional enrichment, which a series of shallow and hedonistic encounters can never generate, it also provides the best possible start in life for children.” I know a single mother who has done a much better job at bringing her child up in a working class background than my parents ever did in a upper-middle class background.

Morality is far from universal and therefore should not be imposed. People can have genuine reasons for not wanting to marry at the age of twenty and stay married for the rest of their lives. They may want to travel the world, be with different people, do different things. Unless you are lucky enough to meet someone who has exactly the same dreams as you, there is very good reason for not wanting to settle down until latter in life, if at all. Even then, why marry? What’s wrong with living together without that magical piece of paper.

Nudging can be a very good thing that can help acieve liberal goals. But the Conservatives are wrong to try and use it to impose morals rather than ethics.

Humanite, what exactly is the difference between morality and ethics under this model? I studied philosophy for several years and we used morality and ethics pretty much interchangeably (aren’t they more or less latin and greek synonyms?). I disagree with the state nudging in either direction, but it sounds like you are happier with it so long as it is in the direction that you approve. This means you are still in favour of coercive strategies even if they are not openly aggressive.

Re morals and ethics, I’ve noted too often that for some people morals are what you have if you are religious, ethics are for the godless.

Well, the OED certainly thinks that “moral” and “ethical” are synonyms.

Yet it would, I think, be agreeable if the language could develop so that they weren’t – “moral” perhaps referring to prescriptive rules whilst “ethical” could be applied to actions etc that have desirable outcomes.

[12] I wasn;t intending to criticise an individual, rather to suggest a “house rule” for discussion. And The Economist’s subscription model isn’t at all daft – for The Economist!

“Yet it would, I think, be agreeable if the language could develop so that they weren’t – “moral” perhaps referring to prescriptive rules whilst “ethical” could be applied to actions etc that have desirable outcomes.”

But we already have “utility” for that and that word doesn’t have the moralistic overtone that “ethical” does.

[17] Well, that’s a technical use of “utility” within a particular discourse – in everday language it just means “usefulness” and I think we mean more than that.

There is the beginnings of a distinction – we talk of “ethical investment” whereas we wouldn’t talk of “moral investment”.

I should have expected this argument. My definition of morals and ethics, which I do not claim to be universally accepted, is that morals are a set of values that can be used to judge people (ie. single parents are bad for society, gays should not be able to marry) whereas ethics are about actions that are almost universally accepted to be bad for society.

Religious morals (for the most part) incite discrimination and judgement of other people. Ethics are against certain actions (ie. arms trade, discrimination, causing damage to the environment). Generally I always accept that morals are about people (they come from people and judge people) and ethics are about actions (they do not have to come from people and judge actions rather than people).

The Cooperative Banks ethical policy could not be called a moral policy under this definition and a Christians morals could not be called ethics under this definition.

Once again, I make no claim that these definitions are accepted by anyone else but me.

I was taught as part of political theory that an ethical code is from outside (hypocratic oath, ten commandments, etc) whereas a moral code is internal and something you’ve chosen for yourself and believe in.

IE if you’re not doing something only because you’ve been told it’s bad, but don’t really yourself see it as bad, then you’re acting ethically but not morally. However in common usage the two are used synonymously, and the OED goes with common usage first then technical usage. Ultimately both words are effectively meaningless and both misused and misapplied by far too many people.

I like utility but that does have a fairly cold emotionless approach and I’m certainly not a utilitarian.

Mike @ 16, I personally consider any subscription wall to be daft as it’s been shown repeatedly that takeup is fairly low and advertising is a better source of revenue, especially given that a search engine will not send traffic your way, thus negating part of the long tail effect that an article that old could generate. If the economist wants to, in my view, hurt its business by preventing traffic, that’s its call, but I reserve the right to call such business models daft and celebrate when they’re dropped (like both the NYT and the Indytab did recently).

I’m sure this has been covered recently, and yes, they are much abused terms, particularly when recieved defiitions are imposed according to the dictionary model rather than discovered through a thesaurus.

Morals represent process values, while ethics encompass a systemic view – so I agree with MatGB that the difference is detween internal and external perspectives, but it is also true to say that neither compensate for the political analysis which underpins any predictive ability gained from a fully accurate understanding of causal factors, so both ethics and morality are terms best applied with the benefit of hindsight, and therefore not at all.

Humanite – Your ethics could discriminate against arms traders and industrial developers, so it sort of collapses back into a “I think these people are good, you think they are bad” situation. You seem to be giving your own “morality” the universal position, which is fine, EVERYONE tries to do that (whether they are christians, socialists, muslims, greens and, to a great extent, anarchists and libertarians) but you are trying to define your way linguistically out of the competition. Very clever!

So, now the free market’s famous ‘invisible hand’ will have a nudge to help it along. This is just right wing bullshit. When it comes to morality, the Right always believes in sticking it’s nose into others business. Just as long as rich people don’t have to pay much tax. That is the so called freedom these people support.

Politicians should never lecture about morality because 1, most of them are not moral. And 2, all Govts, whatever colour, do things that are immoral. Like starting illegal wars.

Sally: Are you morally pure then?

Sorry about the Economist link guys – that was just me being absent-minded.

Woobegone – I don’t mean to be rude but your comment,

“I don’t think that’s the real question. The question is whether it works. If it works, you would risk looking like a navel-gazing philosopher to object to it on grounds of some standard of acceptability”

strikes me as ludicrous and dangerous. Lots and lots of things work, torture and curtailing civil rights work for certain ends but I would object to those things on a standard of acceptability – a standard of basic humanity in the torture case. Surely objecting to things on some standard of acceptability is a fundamental part to democratic debate?

Tom P – I agree that the arguments and policies presented in the book (up to a point) are much subtler than Cameron and Osbourne are painting them. The most important argument is that simply legislating for choice in public services is not a panacea and will disadvantage the least-advantaged further unless it is done carefully.

Humanite – I think the tax incentives you recommend would be more paternalist than libertarian paternalist, which shows up how grey an area libertarian paternalism really is (although, I reiterate the book itself is quite compelling).

And, finally, on the subject of ethics v morality. The philosopher Bernard Williams said that ethics was a “peculiar institution” comparable to slavery whereas ethics was about individuals adopting a view on what a good life was.

- “And, finally, on the subject of ethics v morality. The philosopher Bernard Williams said that ethics was a “peculiar institution” comparable to slavery whereas ethics was about individuals adopting a view on what a good life was. ”

Well that pretty much settles it.

Dan,

Let’s look at the specific example of torture. Is the violent nature of the practise what makes torture unacceptable, or is it that torture’s violent nature means anything resulting from it’s practise is questionable what makes torture unacceptable?

I find the argument that a torturer would respond to appeals to desist on the grounds of common humanity simply absurd, because the power relationship between a torturer and victim is predefined as unequal – much as one might wish it were not so.

Really, is violence abhorent for it’s own sake? Is all violence *wrong*?

If so, why not push for a UN convention on animal rights and prohibit meat-eating and the death industry which supports the ongoing animal holocaust?

Or does that constitute a nudge too far?

Hmm – in my previous post morality – was meant to be the peculiar institution. Sorry, I was tired

Nick – I wasn’t saying a torturer would respond to appeals to humanity. I was just saying that working out what is acceptable and what isn’t is a fundamental part of democratic debate (in response to a previous comment). There are different reasons why torture is acceptable or unacceptable, depending on which political philosophy one subscribes to.

Prohibition wouldn’t count as a nudge according to the definition, because it would be a form of coercion.